A Regional Approach to College and Career Readiness Pathways in Career and Technical Education

该项目旨在为密苏里州西南部的高需求职业培养熟练的技术工人，包括汽车技术、建筑技术和焊接技术。 为了实现这一目标，一所社区学院和六个地区职业和技术教育中心将合作，以增加这些技术领域教育计划的可及性。 预计这种协调将为农村学生从中等教育到区域中学后教育机构的无缝过渡创造条件。对多个学科熟练技术人员的需求不断增加，给密苏里州西南部的K-12学校和中学后教育机构带来了支持当地劳动力教育和发展的压力。事实上，全国各地的学校都在努力寻找有效的策略来满足这些需求。 一个挑战是，许多学生不认为熟练的技术领域是可行的职业选择。另一个挑战是，目前的职业和技术教育计划很难跟上不断变化的行业工具和技术。 该项目将通过努力使职业和技术教育课程与行业需求保持一致，并使教师能够教授改进后的课程来应对这些挑战。 为此，该项目将采用先进技术教育界在课程设计和教育工作者发展方面的最佳做法。 它将应用这些最佳实践来创建一个多项目的区域技术教育模式。 项目活动和成果可作为提高其他农村地区分散的职业和技术教育部门课程质量的典范，该项目旨在在区域一级开发高质量、纵向一致的职业和技术教育途径。该项目的重点是三个职业，这是由密苏里州经济研究和信息中心确定为高需求：汽车技术;建筑技术;和焊接技术。该项目旨在提高高中生对技术职业的认识，加强学生咨询，并为学生提供从中学到大学再到当地劳动力的无缝途径。该项目有可能影响密苏里州41个农村学区的数百名学生，因为他们过渡到中学后教育。该项目有四个目标：1）为中学和中学后阶段的职业和技术教育教师提供高质量的专业发展和资源，以实施三个技术项目的专业学习社区; 2）使用商业和行业领导团队指导三个项目中行业驱动课程的开发，以便中学阶段的学生有机会获得双学分和可叠加的证书; 3）通过开展推广活动和编写教育材料，提高学生和家长对这三个技术方案的价值的认识; 4）为学生提供以工作为基础的学习机会，并通过在线学习管理系统跟踪他们的经验。作为该项目成果编制的材料将作为独立的资源打包并广泛传播。该项目由先进技术教育计划资助，该计划侧重于为推动国家经济的先进技术领域培养技术人员。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to prepare skilled technical workers for high demand occupations in southwest Missouri, including automotive technology, construction technology, and welding technology. To achieve this goal, a community college and six regional career and technical education centers will collaborate to increase accessibility to education programs in these skilled technical fields. This coordination is expected to create a seamless transition for rural students from secondary education to a regional postsecondary institution. The increasing demand for skilled technicians in multiple disciplines has placed pressure on K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions in southwest Missouri to support local workforce education and development. In fact, schools across the nation are struggling to find effective strategies to meet such needs. One challenge is that many students do not consider skilled technical fields as viable career options. Another challenge is that current career and technical education programs struggle to stay current with changing industry tools and techniques. The project will tackle these challenges by working toward aligning career and technical education curricula with industry needs and preparing teachers to teach the improved curricula. To this end, the project will implement best practices in curriculum design and educator development from the Advanced Technological Education community. It will apply these best practices to create a multi-program, regional model for skilled technical education. Project activities and outcomes may serve as a model for improving program quality in distributed career and technical education departments in other rural areas.This project is designed to develop high-quality, vertically aligned, career and technical education pathways at a regional level. The project focuses on three occupations that were identified by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center as high demand: automotive technology; construction technology; and welding technology. The project intends to increase high school students’ awareness of technical careers, enhance student advising, and provide students with seamless pathways from secondary school through college, and into the local workforce. The project has the potential to impact hundreds of students in 41 rural Missouri school districts as they transition to post-secondary education. The project has four goals: 1) provide career and technical education teachers at the secondary and postsecondary level with high quality professional development and resources to implement professional learning communities for three technical programs; 2) use Business and Industry Leadership Teams to guide the development of industry-driven curricula in the three programs so that students at the secondary level have opportunities to earn dual credit and stackable credentials; 3) improve student and parent perceptions about the value of these three technical programs through the development of outreach activities and educational materials; and 4) place students in work-based learning opportunities and track their experiences via an online learning management system. Materials developed as a result of this project will be packaged as stand-alone resources and disseminated broadly. This project is funded by the Advanced Technological Education program that focuses on the education of technicians for the advanced-technology fields that drive the nation's economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.